Your Friendly Philosopher & Guide

After the recent Mumbai blast, the government asked the ISPs (Internet Service Provider) to block ‘FEW’ blogs, which supposedly had content that helped terrorist outfits. The message sent across by the government was clear, but few ISPs didn’t understand the message properly, and went on to block the main domain (http://www.blogspot.com), instead of few sub domains (http://*****.blogspot.com) – leading to a virtual furore. Now that the government has asked the ISPs to release all the other URLs, the ISPs that blocked the URLs aren’t able to do so, for mere unavailability of proper technology (as said by David Appasamy of Sify.com on http://www.kiruba.com).

I am not trying to glorify myself, or my particular case here….but still…
I personally faced this problem related to blogs while working for Sify 2 years back. Few or rather a couple of top heads thought that my content was not appreciable in the greater good of the company. Hence was asked to stop blogging, or leave the job. I decided to go by the latter, not because I wanted to express myself very badly to the world. But it was because it was shit thrown on my self-respect! I am not taking the crap about - greater good or smaller good of the whole – if it is freedom, it is complete freedom, and the author and the readers are completely aware about what they write and what they read respectively. And none can decide what is good for one and what is not – the very thought of segregating blog content (which started as a personal diary) under two different categories - good and bad - can lead to the idea of censorship!

A lot of friends, colleagues, and acquaintances supported my cause, but none stood by me. They kept telling me that I should not step back – but ultimately you need to surrender to bigger powers. I pulled out my blog, took 6 months, quit my job and re-launched my blogsite – which thankfully is feeding me today. If today, some bigger power blocks my blogsite (whether government, or ISPs), I cannot do anything – I will remain as helpless as ever, with no support from anybody – except few write-ups or debates on the virtual world!

The major difference between the present generation and the generation that existed before 1947 is – they compromised on their personal lives, and fought for a common cause. And we never compromise on our personal lives, and we fight only when we get affected personally. We care a hair if our neighbour’s house is on fire, and we need people to support us – when our own ass is on fire!

Moreover most of the times, we don’t know the difference between a right or a wrong cause, and other times we fight for issues for which we have the least information about (for instance the issue of reservation for backward classes).

Under hypothetical situation if the government decides to ban all the blogs, immaterial of the content! What will we do? What can we do? And what shall we do? The simple answer is NOTHING. We probably will continue sending anonymous URLs sitting in the corner of the air-conditioned office room, because we have bigger things to worry about – our US visa and the next job hop.